Music is conventionally sold to consumers through either retail outlets or mail order houses. Retail outlets, such as department stores or specialty music stores, sell music directly to consumers on "tangible" media, including compact discs (CDs), magnetic cassette tapes, digital tapes, and vinyl record albums. Mail order houses send catalogs to subscribers who may then order music on the tangible media, which are then mailed to the subscribers through the postal service. A number of costs are involved in the retail sale of music. First of all, the tangible media must be packaged. The packaging typically includes theft-deterrent devices, and warehouses are needed to store the tangible media. Other costs associated with the retail sale of music include inventory control, retail floor space, commercial real estate, merchandise returns, and so on.
One approach at circumventing the conventional retail sale of music is through the Internet. The Internet approach requires the user to have a computer with a powerful processor, an added-on sound card, and a high-speed modem. In order to listen to a desired selection, the user needs to access a web page typically dedicated to a single artist. Because of the limited bandwidth of telephone lines, the user then needs to decide on a tradeoff: real-time listening or high-fidelity listening. If the user wants to listen to the selection in real time, then the computer will play back the selection as a monophonic and heavily filtered 8-bit translation of the original selection. If the user wants to listen to the selection in its original high-fidelity form, then the user needs to download the selection; after the downloading is complete, the user may listen to the selection by playing it back through a home stereo system. A number of disadvantages plague the Internet approach to listening to high-fidelity music in real time: it requires specialized hardware and software; it is inconvenient and complicated; and it is frustratingly slow.
The music industry is highly segmented into a multitude of categories or niches. One only needs to watch a music awards show to see all of the different categories of music. For example, commercial music may be divided into the following categories: classical, popular or "pop" music (often regarded as "Top 40"), country western, rock and roll, heavy metal, jazz, hip hop, rap, urban, adult contemporary, easy listening, new age, punk, soul, funk, Latin, folk, international. Each of these general categories may be further divided into sub-categories. For example, rock and roll is often considered to include heavy metal, punk, alternative, "classic" rock, and even rhythm and blues; classical may include opera, chamber, recital, symphonies, and choral. The classification of music is essentially endless.
One of the advantages of dividing music into categories is that retailers can determine niche markets from the people who buy certain types of music. Typically speaking, heavy metal music is listened to by male teenagers; classical music is listened to by people belonging to an educated, professional, or high-income class; and rap and hip hop are heavily followed by urban youths and young adults. Knowing the demographics of a particular geographic region, retailers may focus on the type of music endemic for the region. In regard to the above example, a retail specialty music store located in an urban setting will carry a wide selection of rap and hip hop but will not carry (or only have a very limited selection) of country western music. Marketing experts have determined that a particular demographic group who listens to a certain type of music typically purchases similar other products en masse. A blatant example of this situation would be that classical music listeners are more likely to purchase a luxury automobile than a pickup truck or compact car and more likely to read The New Yorker than Rolling Stone magazine than heavy metal listeners.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide a distribution system which overcomes the disadvantages and drawbacks associated with conventional approaches of distributing music.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a distribution system which plays back music to subscribers in either real time or at a predetermined time in the future in high-fidelity bandwidth.
It is another object of the invention to provide a music distribution system which records information relevant to consumer behavior based on musical selections to be used for marketing and promotional purposes.